


Seasons

by lferion



Category: Iskryne Series - Elizabeth Bear & Sarah Monette
Genre: Complicated Relationships, M/M, Poetry, Weather, Wolves, Yuletide 2012
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 16:00:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lferion/pseuds/lferion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year-wheel spins. Over time the thing between the three of them became easier, but it never became easy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Seasons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Akshi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Akshi/gifts).



* * *

Over time the thing between the three of them became easier, but it never became easy.

* * *

_Ice-eyed Isolfr, cool-tempered and keen …_

Skjaldwulf scowled. The words were not coming as he wanted them, the alliteration halting, the right words evading tongue and memory. He had seen Isolfr's almost imperceptible flinch at the epithet 'ice-hearted' and it had hurt — both to see and to hear. The flippant comment that someone — Skjaldwulf himself perhaps — should make the song that afixed a better byname had struck deeply, but the song so far refused to come. Skjaldwulf was not used to words being so recalcitrant.

It would be easier to tell of the snow and sparks that frothed and fermented between himself and Vethulf than it was to properly sing of Isolfr. to craft a song for Vethulf, fire-bright and anything but self-effacing. But that was a thing they needed to work out for themselves, how to be wolfjarls together, how to find a balance with Isolfr — and Viradechtis, though Mar and Kjaran were perfectly comfortable. That song was much too close for the heall, too close even for their bed.

_Vigorous Vethulf, proud and upstanding …_

No, that was not for any ears that could not already hear what was in his heart.

Mar butted his big, hard head into the soft place under Skjaldwulf's ribs, startling him out of his increasingly fruitless and frustrating reverie. The whole business of constructing words into elaborate edifices was a thing Mar had never understood. He knew that this odd thing was important to Skjaldwulf, and that it touched some of the same places as the harmonies of wolf-song did for wolves, but when it distressed his brother, Mar certainly understood that. For wolves, even wolves who lived with men, life was straightforward, in the now: the pack, the hunt, sun and snow and a warm place to sleep. Unhappiness was immediate. Mar, laughing his wolf-laugh, gave him Isolfr in a single thought of the solidity of a pine tree, black against snow. 

The wolf-names for Vethulf & Isolfr were much more evocative than their human ones.

Giving up for the nonce, Skjaldwulf let Mar pull him back into the moment, the myriad duties of the day.

* * *

It was winter, days short and grey, the nights long and cold. Without trolls to hunt, there were still hazards enough that patrols went out, and there was all the usual making and mending as well as ongoing building of the heall. They had the main buildings up, and the work went forth inside, finishing walls, building out rooms. There was never any shortage of work, but it went forth with less of the desperation of the last several winters. There was time to think, to plan, to heal.

Skjaldwulf worked on the piece — pieces — on and off as he had time. The words deigned to shape themselves into staves and parts of lines, phrases that caught the line of Isolfr's throat, the sweep of Vethulf's axe and the breadth of his shoulders. Words that limned the contrast of Viradechtis' red-black, regal beauty and paired it with Isolfr's paler and quieter mein, sun to moon. 

The words came reluctant at any season, but he stored them away one by one in memory long trained, no fragment to be forgotten.

So there were two songs growing, one in his head and one in his heart, one of stately, measured words that marched through the thin rime of summer snow to the peaks and crevasses of the Iskryne, the Crown of the North, in stately cadences, telling of the terrible trolls, fell and foul in their fetid dens, dark and disturbing to the sons of men that fought them there. 

And the other, a heart-song of composed of images, feelings, touches, scents and scent-impressions. A wolf-poem, shaped of things wolves and wolf-brothers understood between them. A poem wrought of need and heat, of desire and distrust, pain and anger all overcome with effort, time and understanding. A poem of love.

* * *

When the storm descended, whiting out the air with snow and leaving the heall mid-winter dark though it was more than a moon to go before shortened days began to grow again, Viradechtis insisted on having all of them by her, mates and brothers both. Mar and Kjaran were nothing loath to join her in a comfortable pile in the marked off corner behind the arras, making a kind of nest of the furs and woolen blankets on the newly re-made great bed. Isolfr, Skjaldwulf and Vethulf were less enthusiastic, not to mention busy.

The first blizzard of the season was both cause for rejoicing and a different kind of effort. Patrols went out, though not as many as in previous years, and the heall was crowded with men and wolves. Skjaldwulf found himself speaking more often than was ever his wont, the work requiring it. He noticed Vethulf speaking less. Not less quick or forceful, or even fiery at need, but tempered in his heat. Isolfr was a presence more than words, listening with ears and heart and pack-sense, holding all the net of relationships of wolves and men with steady and increasingly deft hands. All three of them were learning from each other.

* * *

After winter, spring was an astonishment of color and light and sensory exuberance. Skjaldwulf never ceased to be startled by the renewing earth, the vivid green of the new growth, the sudden revelation of mica-flecked granite layered and jumbled with dark soil that had lain under snow, pebbles and stones of every color washed by the freed waters of the streams. Vethulf's hair seemed to catch fire from the strengthening sun, and even Isolfr thawed, though it was Viradechtis who chased Mar and Kjaran out into the green-lit forest to romp in last remnants of snow. They came back cheerfully coated in fragrant mud, laughing at their staid and industrious brothers. 

Later, Vethulf would prove it was not just his hair that was made exuberant by the returning light, nor was Skjaldwulf behindhand in enthusiasm.

Viradechtis came into her season, choosing Mar and Kjaran once again. Practiced now, it was easier to ride the hard demands of mating lust and temper them with love. To watch Vethulf take Isolfr, both beautiful in stark desire, to know Vethulf watched as well; all three caught up in the overwhelming need, but never lost in it. And once the need was done, to let Isolfr be his separate self again. Not easy, but not as hard as once it was. 

That was a song only for the heart.

* * *

It was a mead-summer, the very air golden, heavy and sweet with the scent of heather and gorse, hawthorn and holly and elder. Even the ancients of the forest felt the grace of the season, and it was easy to imagine the far northern expanses that lay at the feet of the Iskryne starred with moss-flowers and the quick-growing, short-lived wildflowers of the arctic summer strewn thick as snow. It seemed the hum of bees was present all the long hours of the days, lingering in the twilight. The hives were dripping with honey, enough for everyone, tended and wild alike. 

Sokkolfr was as busy as the bees, brewing and preserving, drying and pickling against the winter. With such bounty, it would be honeyed ale and braggot, metheglin and melomel, and true honey-mead of legend.

There were men and wolves out on patrol, for though it was the light season and there were no trolls, there were still bears and wyverns and feral men, not to mention the possibilities of Rheans. But those threats did not cloud this bright day. 

The words came slow as kisses, languorous in the long twilight or snatched in busy moments, all that long summer, as Skjaldwulf watched Vethulf split logs bare-chested, gleaming with sweat, his shoulder now entirely healed. Saw Isolfr smile at the antics of his daughter, the force of laughing energy that was his sister.

* * *

The Autumn sun sank red into the west as they went about preparing for the hunt, the three of them together. Viradechtis insisted on it, what was likely the last before she grew too heavy with pups to chase the rabbits in their thick, silvering coats, as she was already too gravid to fell boar or even deer. For now she would leave that to Mar and Kjaran, which they did with a will. They camped the last night by a stream busy with fish, and Vethulf built a fire that sent sparks high among the wheeling stars. They sat late together, red light gleaming on braids red and black and pale, eyes bright, Mar and Kjaran and Viradechtis warm and content, heads heavy on their brothers laps. This was a moment to remember, to savor: the successful hunt, all working together, and now to simply be, companionable and filled with plump rabbit and many-layered love.

They slept all in one mound of furs and undemanding warmth. Later, as the fire turned to glowing coal, and desire simmered, undemanding but also unhidden, Isolfr handed Skjaldwulf the jar of slick ointment with a crinkle at the corner of his eye, and was present with them as he and Vethulf made slow, deliberate love. Skjaldwulf's coming was all the sweeter for the glint in Isolfr's eyes as Vethulf moved hard and hot within him driving him to ecstasy.

When they returned to Franangford, Skjaldwulf knew the shape of both pieces, words falling into place finally with ease.

* * *

Winter again, the heall snow-bound and dim, pups safe delivered and wolves and men content to turn to quiet work of hand and hearth. An itinerant bard from the south was wintering over, given a seat near the fire and a place at the upper table in exchange for news, tales and songs. One evening, after the business of dinner and the naming of the last of the tithe-boys to bond to Ingrun's yearling litter, before the visitor could begin his first tale, Skjaldwulf stood up from the head of the table with a nod and a smile for his co-Jarl and lover, his wolfsprechend and beloved. He walked to the fire in the center of the now-finished great room, scuffed the rushes as he planted his feet wide, and stood tall. There were butterflies in his belly, but there always were, for a piece that mattered. He remembered the day Isolfr had come to Nithogsfioll, those years ago; that song had felt much the same.

The heall quieted, wolves and men settling and turning their attention to him. Skjaldwulf drew breath and began.

  
_Hail to the hall,     to the stout-hearted heroes,_  
 _Hail to the hearth-men,     the godsmen and thanes._  
 _Hail to the wolfmaegth,     the brothers and sisters,_  
 _The carls and jarls,     speakers and holders,_  
 _The leaders and lovers     and all of their kin._  
 _I tell now the tale     of the downfall of trolls._

_Isolfr, alf-friend,     ice-eyed and keen-sighted,_  
 _Knew that the doom     of the world was at hand_  
 _If men did not gather,     wolfmaegth and wolfless_  
 _To seek for the source     of the summer-mad foe…._  


* * *


End file.
